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ADAXIS: On a mission to reduce the layers of complexity in robotic Additive Manufacturing France’s ADAXIS is tackling two of the most complex advanced industrial manufacturing disciplines head on — Robotics and Additive Manufacturing. Its solution aims to make robotic Additive Manufacturing more accessible to any company that wants it, including for metal processes, irrespective of background or industry sector. Rachel Park spoke with Henri Bernard and Emil Johansson, two of ADAXIS’ co-founders, as well as project partners, to discover their story and ambitions.
Necessity is the mother of invention. This centuries-old proverb still has a ring of truth to it, even in the 21 st century. It often proves to be a key driver for taking many new business ideas into commercial reality. In the case of ADAXIS, necessity was certainly one driver to the founding of the company, accompanied by passion. To explain, ADAXIS was founded early in 2021 when four people, Henri Bernard, Guénolé Bras, Emil Johansson and Vasan Churchill, were driven by a shared frustration towards the time-consuming and complex task of programming industrial robots for Additive Manufacturing and the resulting access barriers within the industry. Prior to 2019, Bernard and Bras (at the ESTIA Institute of Technology in France) and Johansson and Churchill (at the RISE Research Institute of Sweden) simultaneously undertook years of applied research into using industrial robotics for advanced manufacturing. In 2019, serendipity brought all four together following the launch of EIT Manu-
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facturing, an EU-funded institution backing the most innovative manufacturing projects in Europe. At a match-making event hosted in San Sebastian, Spain, Johansson, who was only in attendance because his manager was unable to be there, “presented a pitch that sparked
interest from numerous companies and also got the attention of the team at ESTIA. None of us knew each other at this time, but we joined together for an applied research project that was granted funding.” The project itself highlighted a number of things, not least the frus-
Fig. 1 The ADAXIS founders, from left to right: Guenole Bras, Vasan Churchill, Emil Johanson and Henri Bernard (Courtesy ADAXIS)
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